They say signals in the domestic markets and coverage of thecomments in Chinese language state media have both been muted,unlike the lead up to the last time authorities widened thecurrency's trading band in April last year.

"I think it's no more than rhetoric for foreigners," said aforeign exchange trader at a foreign bank in Shanghai. "We havenot heard anything about a change coming."

The yuan exchange rate is allowed to rise or fallby 1 percent in either direction from an official midpoint rate set by the People's Bank of China (PBOC) eachmorning.

A junior PBOC official was quoted in the officialEnglish-language China Daily on Wednesday saying that Chinaremained committed to widening the band.

A day later, PBOC Deputy Governor Yi Gang said the bandwould be widened in "the near future" during comments at anInternational Monetary Fund (IMF) panel in Washington.

The remarks sparked a flurry of expectations the centralbank might give the exchange rate more room to rise or sinkagainst the dollar on a given day.

UBS analysts Manik Narain and Geoffrey Yu in London said onThursday that the central bank might widen the band within 72hours to coincide with a Group of 20 meeting in Washington onThursday and Friday.

"Signs are pretty clear that the PBOC is preparing a bandwidening very soon," they wrote in a research note.

"Chinese officials at the G20 can present this step asfurther signs of them accepting a market-driven exchange rate,casting their own policies in a positive light as opposed to thecontroversies surrounding the activities of the BOJ (Bank ofJapan)."

Scepticism on the part of Chinese traders comes in partbecause the comments were given negligible coverage in Chineselanguage state media.

The official Shanghai Securities News ran an article on page3 on Friday discussing the comments, two days after they weremade, but the headline said now was a good time to "consider"widening the trading band.

The official Xinhua news service covered Yi's comments butrelegated them to a single paragraph at the bottom of anarticle.

"This is the way that China handles political pressure foryuan to appreciate, this time before the G20 meeting inWashington," said the trader at the Shanghai bank. "And it wouldbe meaningless to widen the trading bank even as the PBOC isstill using the midpoint to virtually dictate the exchangerate."

When the PBOC widened the trading band in April 2012, ittelegraphed the decision to the market through officialstatements by high level officials, including then-premier WenJiabao, in the Chinese-language official media and throughadjustments in the daily midpoint setting, which traders saw atthe time as creating room for more volatility.

At the same time, the currency market was in a far lessexcited state at that time than it has been this year, with thespot rate and the midpoint staying in close range of each other.

The political rhetoric this year has been more subdued andtraders say there are few signs in its setting of the midpointto suggest the PBOC is signalling a change anytime soon.

Instead, the central bank has been setting a series ofrecord-high midpoints, allowing the currency to hit recordintraday highs against the dollar in spot trading for fourstraight trading days through Wednesday.

Traders speculated the series of highs were designed forforeign consumption since they came as U.S. Secretary of StateJohn Kerry visited China last week and ahead of this week'smeetings of the IMF and G20, where criticism China curbs theyuan's appreciation are often aired.

"We don't think that the widening of the band will happenvery soon," said Patrick Wu, head of trading for China at J.P.Morgan Chase in Shanghai.

"The PBOC may have put this in the agenda, but in terms ofwhen it will happen, we don't think it is likely in the nextthree months."

The spot rate has hovered near the strongest legallyallowable value since September, showing that the central bankis effectively using the midpoint not as a market-drivenreference rate but rather as a leash.

The result has been a gradual decline in the very two-wayvolatility a wider trading band was supposed to produce.